Thursday, February 18, 2010

The MaMachinima International Festival (MMIF) is upon is once again, infact it kicks off this coming Saturday Feb. 20th – One of the key orgainizers is Second Life’s Chantal Harvey. Chantal, who is herself a keen machinima maker and has devoted many hours to this creative art form both as a promoter and as a dedicated artist. Chantal was able to take time out from her busy schedule to answer a few questions here for metanopsis.

Q3. What prompted you to start making Machinima?The closing down of my favorite club in Second Life (TJice) - I so wanted to preserve it, and somebody pointed me towards the build-in camera (2007). I work for TV in the Netherlands, and the next logical step was - filming in Virtual worlds, of course. TV now in rl is pretty boring, to me. Machinima is not, if made well.

Q4. Your involved in the forthcoming MMIF event would you like to tell us a little more about how this will shape up?The MMIF Mamachinima Int. Festival is a mixed reality machinima event. It takes place on feb. 20, 2010, (1st edition was in 2009), and shows 54 films (yes by 54 machinimatographers!) during a 7 hour marathon, simultanuously in Amsterdam NL, Second Life, and streamed on the web. Official press release here: http://mmif.wordpress.com/

The festival is non contest, non profit, and a celebration of machinima, meant to create a community. MMIF 2010 has entries made in SL, WOW, the Movies, Iclone, Moviestorm, Sims2, SecondLife , a 3D entry, and rl/vr mixed entries. Machinimatographers enter the work they are most proud of, and attend the festival for Q and A. It is one big celebration of machinima, attend if you can!

Q5. What is your personal definition of Machinima?Computer generated filming, created in virtual worlds or (single)game engine and/or special software. The definition is an evolving one.

In my opinion there are categories, like real time machinima, single game machinima, live machinima, on/offline machinima, - and subcategories like art/storytelling/edited or un edited, etc etc.

Get my point....it is all machinima, even though we drift into different directions and explore the possibilities. You know, I feel that we are all pioneers, and there s no knowing where this will end. The future is wide open. What is machinima --- it is many many things.

Q6. What are you personally working on right now?A childrens series - the pilot is : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN-Af8Z2DuA , The Joy of Music, and I plan to take this to rl, will send it to the BBC - they should see the value of machinima. All big broadcast companies are cutting down on costs, and yet did not discover machinima. Lets change that and open their eyes.

I am working towards a feature movie in machinima, and preparing for the next 48 Hour Film Project for machinima in September 2010. And, forever working on the MMIF festival - 2011 date has already been set on February 19, 2011.

Q7. What are the main tools of your trade to create Machinima.For me, Fraps and Adobe Premiere CS3 and CS4. I encode with QTpro, and Formatfactory, sometimes Virtual Dub.

Q8. How do you see the progress of Machinima in the Metaverse?As inevetable.

Q9. Currently Machinima is one less noted creative avenues in Second Life why do you think this is?

I can see a rapid change of that. Machinima quality itself is improving fast, we are long gone and away from the original capturing of battles and parties. It evolved into short movies, journalism, TV shows, professional music clips, art, streaming to web. Basically it went from shooting gameplay into a planned production ....and ppl recognise that. There are big developments atm., like the UWA contest, the MMIF, Sundance has a machinima this year, Atopic festival in France had a whole day of machinima, IBC Amsterdam had a Gaming And Beyond panel about machinima! and people like Flimsey Freenote creating a machinima sim, so many new roads to follow. For the first time ever I was asked to have machinima exhibitions in Second Life, I believe times are changing for all of us.

Q10. Whom as a Machinima artist do you admire ?The 48 hour film project machinima contestants are my heroes! They took on the challenge. There are many I admire, lets say that I admire the perfectionists amongst us.

Q11. What do you think would make a definitive benchmark for Machinima to cross over in a larger way to be noticed in a Real Life arena ?I hate to say it, but mainstream television can make the difference here - if we take it there. lets do that...

Now Chantal you have the opportunity to ask yourself 3 questions ...

Q1 Would a big budget have made any of my films better, looking back.......Nah. Not now that i have my new monster pc. Well, only time-wise, as I could stop my rl job and spend 18/24 on machinima.

Q2 What if I had a genie-in-a-bottle that granted me 3 wishes....1. . I would make the machinima Movie of the century.2. I would put a machinima sparkle in éverybody ´s mind.3. I would save one wish for later....for that rainy day.Q3 What message would I like to get across, organising the MMIF....Lets work together , support and promote each other, be professional, improve, and have fun doing it.